Thursday, July 11, 2013

Mini Patio Makover

Hi ya'll! Today I'm going to share with you the mini makeover I gave my "patio" last weekend.  Its really just the landing at the top of my stairs, but since I don't actually have a patio or porch or anything of the sort, this tiny space is my apartment version of a patio.



You'd think I would have done it before the 4th right? But no, I'm a procrastinator and did it after. I did do a bunch of thinking about it before though! That counts for something right?!  Haha. Jk.

But for realz... if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you might have guessed that I've been looking for a job which has been a lot of work.


Yup, that's me! All ready for an interview. I'll tell you guys more about all that soon.  But for now, lets get back to the patio makeover...

Who kills every flower they put on their patio? That would be me.  I'm great at keeping my indoor plants alive, but I tend to neglect the patio plants and they just don't do well without a lot of water.  So here is what my patio looked like before the make over...


So sad!  Aside from dead plants, I also wanted to give that thrift store chair a fresh fabric and my welcome mat needed a good shake since my kitty sheds all over it. (I'm blaming that one on her! Haha)  And just ignore the broken screen... that's my ghetto-chic kitty door!  The overhang is also a big disaster. One day the management started scraping the over hang, presumingly to paint it, only to reveal major termite damage, at which point they stopped and left it that way. That was months ago. And lets just not talk about the giant crack in the landing.  Thanks management guys!  But that stuff is not my responsibility, so lets get down to the stuff that is...

The first step was to plant some new plants. I had a snake plant indoors that I wanted to move to that pot and thought it would be perfect to surround it with some fun, hopefully easy to keep alive, succulents.  I stopped by The Plant Stand in Costa Mesa, which has a really nice selection and learned that they were having a succulent "class" the following day at which they were giving out 50% off coupons for succulents. Count me in!


I went back the next day to collect the goods and my awesome boyfriend offered to keep me company. I thought he'd be helpful in the decision making process because he usually just picks one thing or the other, but instead he got super into the succulent hunt!  He kept finding new succulents he liked.  It was so cute!  Now maybe he knows why I always have a hard time making decision like that.  They're all so great!  But we finally did come to a decision and picked out a nice variety of scale and colors.  And the result...




Next, I recovered the chair with a fabric remnant that I got from school.  I actually kind of like the existing equestrian print fabric, but I thought something a little more modern and colorful would give it a little excitement. I went to Joann's to find something but discovered that they are closing the location by my house and only selling fabric by the entire bolt. Not wanting to purchase 6 yards of fabric for which I have no use, I decided to stick with the remnant.


There I am screwing the seat back on... so exciting!  Even though it wasn't my first choice of fabric, when it was all said and done, I think it turned out great!  And especially appropriate for the Fourth of July (even though I finished it on the 6th). I thought about repainting the metal, but I decided to leave that to another day.  Check out the before and after...


And the whole 4 square feet of my "patio" all pulled together...


Much better right?  Now all I have to do is keep my little succulents alive.  Wish me luck!


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